Space Oddity
by Emmylou
Summary: Sherlock Holmes was hit by an explosion in 2010 and when he woke up it was 1983. Gene Hunt isn't ready for a new DI yet, and doesn't know what he's in for. Sherlock  BBC  and Ashes to Ashes crossover.


**Space Oddity**

**Summary:** Sherlock Holmes was hit by an explosion in 2010 and when he woke up it was 1983. Gene Hunt isn't ready for a new DI yet, and doesn't know what he's in for. Sherlock (BBC) and Ashes to Ashes crossover.

**Genre:** Crossover

**Pairing:** John/Sherlock (if you squint). Gene/Alex (if you *really* squint).

**Disclaimer:** The Beeb owns New!Sherlock and LoM/Ashes to Ashes

Spoilers: Final episode of Ashes to Ashes. Finale of Sherlock.

**A/N:** Dedicated to Cat, who wanted a Sherlock fic. Sorry it took so long, but when I saw this prompt, I knew it was the one for you.

* * *

Gene Hunt was used to DI's who weren't all there. Or rather, were a few decades out of time (and now that he had his memories back, a lot of the bullshit Tyler and Bolly had come out with made a lot more sense).

But this one was- if possible- even weirder.

In some ways it was a comfort. He'd accepted the loss of Sam, Annie, Bolly, Ray, Chris, and Shaz. It was the way things had been meant to go. But he was only human and starting again from scratch was hard.

He didn't want a friend, like Sam. He didn't want a... something else, like Bolly. He wanted someone he could hate. Someone it wouldn't hurt to say goodbye to.

Thank the gods, this new one was easy to hate from the start.

* * *

He was irritatingly tall, had floppy hair, funny eyes, and a cockiness that made Gene want to punch him on sight. Hard.

He did. The man reeled back and looked at him with narrowed, evaluating eyes. When he spoke, he rattled off Gene's life story with a patronising tone.

"DCI Gene Hunt. Moved down to London about four years ago – probably the mixture of a loss of a colleague and your divorce. She left you. Can't say I blame her – there is only so many times your husband can get drunk, sleep with a prostitute, and come home and piss into the wardrobe."

The man gave a smug 'ask me how I worked it out' look.

Gene responded with another punch. This time to the gut. The man doubled over, but didn't cry out.

"My name's on the door. My accent in't that hard to guess at. And as for the rest, you sound like you speak from experience," Gene taunted. "Your fella not taking you up the jacksy enough these days?"

The man smirked. "So this really *is* 1983, no modern policeman would dare make a homophobic insult to a stranger. Especially as I'm dressed alarmingly like a lawyer."

The man looked down at his pale suit, as if only noticing it for the first time. "Dear god, it's awful." He reached up to tentatively touch his own hair. "Why is there lacquer in my hair?"

"Dunno, but you certainly look like a poofter," said Gene helpfully.

"I'm looking for a man," said the new DI.

"Talk like a poofter too."

"His name is Dr. John Watson. He was with me in the explosion. If I'm here, he must be here too."

Hunt stepped back and moved over to his abandoned whiskey. For the first time he felt a small amount of pity for the man. When his former DI's had charged onto the scene, he hadn't understood why they were acting like lunatics. Even if Gene didn't like this man, he at least had a good idea how the man had ended up here. He could save this man a lot of pain and confusion by telling him now.

But he was a selfish bastard. Telling him might mean losing a DI far earlier than Sam or Bolly. As long as the man was ignorant, he would stay here. And as annoying as this twat was, he was at least someone for Gene to spar with.

"Whoever you're on about is long gone," he said gruffly. "You were found unconscious at a local swimming baths this morning. No explosion."

The man stood from where he was leant against the filing cabinet. "Then we've got to go back! Come on. There might still be clues as to what has happened to John and why I'm here."

To give the man credit, he didn't sound worried about his own situation, only the disappearance of his friend. He spoke with a tone that suggested it would only be a matter of time before he figured it out for himself.

"I don't know where you think you're going," snapped Gene. "But there's an empty desk out there-" a couple of empty desks, he thought bitterly, "and the scum of London isn't going to catch itself."

"But you're the police. It's your job to look into disappearances."

"*Our* job, Detective Inspector," said Gene coldly.

The man stopped. He spent a moment delicately fishing about in his pockets and retrieved a warrant card. "Detective Inspector Sherlock Holmes," he read. "Metropolitan Police."

He closed the warrant card, replaced it in his jacket, and then – to Gene's surprise – laughed long and hard.

"Oh this is going to be very interesting to work out!" he howled. "I couldn't ask for a better puzzle."

* * *

In some ways, Gene admitted, Sherlock was probably the best person he could have been landed with after the...events of the few months before. He only ever admitted this to himself late at night, when Sherlock was at least half a mile away, and while very drunk. Because there was no way he'd admit to liking Sherlock.

In fact, objectively there was nothing to like about the man. He was cavalier about his job – frequently forgetting he was actually a policeman. Gene had to haul him out of his flat in the morning, handcuff him to his desk to prevent him rushing out on some mad errand (he always got himself free but at least it slowed him down long enough for Gene to catch up), he refused to be driven anywhere by Gene and spent a fortune on cabs, he couldn't be trusted alone in the morgue, he played the violin at his desk (mostly badly), he was silent for days on end, he turned into a sulky child when bored, he acted like a know it all when he wasn't, he acted like his job was a hobby, he took interest in cases that were far beneath him, refused to investigate the important ones because he considered them dull, and worst of all he didn't drink.

Gene also saw the dark black spectre of cocaine addiction following him, and though he knew enough to know the man wasn't using, the possibility was always there and that thought alone repulsed him.

Add in the fact that the man was clearly a grade A poofter, then Gene thought that if Ray had still been here, Sherlock wouldn't have made it through a hour before they attempted to kill each other.

But, the man had his good points. Good points that Gene suspected only he would ever appreciate.

Sherlock was very much a copper after his own heart – if Sherlock knew he was right he would quite happily let the criminal be beaten to a pulp by Gene, he wasn't above fitting someone up, he didn't go in for touchy-feely policing, he didn't give a flying fuck about procedure, and his interest in Gene's private life was practically zero. He also seemed to genuinely enjoy anything that put his life in danger. Plus he smoked like a chimney to make up for his lack of interest in alcohol.

Sometimes Gene suspected Sherlock barely cared about the life he had left behind.

* * *

That didn't mean Sherlock didn't though. He was slowly learning to recognise the connection his DI shared with his old life – the voices, the clues; things he'd dismissed as weirdness in Sam and Bolly, but he began to understand now.

After the each event, Sherlock would be consumed by his efforts to figure out the conundrum. Why was he in 1983? What had happened to send him here? Each time, he would be possessed by it for days on end, and then would allow himself to be swept up into a new mystery to take his mind off of it.

Gene stuck firmly to his rule of never discussing it, but after seeing the man go days without food or sleep it was hard not to.

"Why're you so desperate to get back to wherever it you came from? You don't seem like you're very attached to anywhere."

Sherlock, yanked the cig out of his mouth, looked up sharply, and ran his fingers through his (unlacquered) hair impatiently.

"Where I am isn't important, but there are so many unanswered questions. If I'm stuck here, then fine, but I have to understand *why*. Would I rather be there than here? Absolutely. I miss... I miss texting."

"Sounds filthy," said Gene. He knew full well that whatever texting was, it wasn't at the top of Sherlock's list of things he wanted to go home for.

Gene wanted to tell him to let it go, to make his peace and settle here. He also knew that it he could answer the younger man's questions and give him peace that way. But like Bolly and Sam, he'd got used to the annoying little fucker and- for a while- he was going to be selfish.

* * *

Months later, Sherlock shot a sixteen year old boy.

It was the conclusion of a messy case. The sort of case Sherlock found boring, and only bothered to show up at all for because Gene forcibly dragged him along (once with Sherlock still in his pyjamas and sulking like a teenager).

Yes, the boy had been a murderer. Yes, he'd been attempting to kill his own mother. But even so, Gene had never met a policeman who didn't feel in anyway guilty for a death they'd caused. Sherlock hadn't taken any joy in it, but once it was over with he didn't seem to care one way or the other.

That, more than anything else told Gene two things. First of all, Sherlock was telling the truth when he said he wasn't a copper – no one with that sort of personality would have made it in the force long enough to become a DI .

Secondly, Sherlock would show no compunction in destroying both Gene and this world in order to get home once he figured out this mystery.

The thought had hit Gene like a bolt of cold terror.

But, once he'd had a few comforting whiskeys, Gene almost came to like the idea. He looked over at his colleague, leaning back in the pub seat, dressed like a goddamn dandy, his eyes closed in thought and smoking his third cigarette in thirty minutes.

They weren't on a case at the moment, which meant that Sherlock was working on the *important* case. The how to get home case.

There was something perversely pleasing in knowing that the man who was going to take him down didn't do it because of hatred, or love, or despair; but out of chilly logic. Because it was something that needed to be done.

* * *

Gene always appreciated a person who was as much of a magnificent bastard as he was.

At the end, Gene had asked Sherlock exactly where home was for him. They were crouched behind a stack of crates and they were about to die. Or rather, Gene was about to die again, and Sherlock was about to live again.

Sherlock Holmes had beaten the system for the second time in history and unlike Sam Tyler, Sherlock Holmes didn't need Gene Hunt in his life.

"221b Baker Street," was all his DI had said. His tone of voice had suggested that it wasn't the place that was important, but the person who lived inside it.

Gene had nodded, and when he spoke he found his voice was unexpectedly gruff. "Fair enough. I know you're a lightweight shandy-drinking southerner, but when your time comes for real there'll be a pack of cigs with your name on them in the Railway Arms."

He clapped Sherlock awkwardly on the shoulder as a father might before his son's wedding.

A look had crossed Sherlock's face. It was as close to fondness as he'd ever seen Sherlock come. "I look forward to it Guv."

And then they'd gone down in a blaze of glory.

* * *

Gene was drinking another whiskey in a bar that smelled like home. He'd always considered heaven to be a pub where it was never your round, but he'd never assumed it would be quite so literal an interpretation.

His first DI was where he belonged; at Gene's side, taking the piss out of Ray.

His second DI was talking to Shaz about something girly, but the smile she sent his way suggested that her thoughts were very much on him.

His third DI was... home. Or rather, with the person that made it home. Gene had a pack of unopened smokes in his pocket, ready for the day when Sherlock Holmes eventually deigned to show up.

Gene grinned. "Another round I think Nelson."

* * *

THE END

* * *

Lemme know what you think!


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